SIXTYEIGHT ART INSTITUTE | 8 June 2018

STINE DEJA in

SYNTHETIC SEDUCTION

8 JUNE – 4 AUGUST 2018

SIXTY EIGHT ART INSTITUTE, COPENHAGEN, DENMARK

Artists: Stine Deja and Marie Munk

Curator: Rebekka Elisabeth Anker-Møller

SixtyEight Art Institute is very pleased to inaugurate a new two-year exhibition cycle with the opening of ‘Synthetic Seduction’ that is the result of a collaboration between two London-based Danish artists, Stine Deja and Marie Munk. Through video and sculpture, the exhibition creates a playful and interactive environment that examines the influence of technology on our innermost experiences.

With a shared interest in how technology alters social behavior, especially in the way we are intimate or present with each other, Deja and Munk take on the question framed by the transhumanist thinker Mark O’Connell, who asks: “Can a machine learn to be a human?”

Through a futuristic laboratory setting, simulating the proverbial hospital room, Munk introduces palpitating and fleshy interactive sculptures – loosely resembling in utero or newly born creatures – that engage artificial forms of physical connection. Each is animated in its own unique fashion via acts of breathing, pulsating, singing, speech, or movement. The sculptures are shown along with three video works by Deja, which stage a playful contrast between algorithmic logic and romantic clichés to draw attention to the patterns at the heart of our most personal and supposedly human-specific, behaviours. Together, the works reveal how it might feel to substitute real intimacy for an artificial version of the same thing. In this way, they invite an exploration of the uncanny.

The title of the exhibition was inspired by Sherry Turkle’s theory of how technology seduces us, making emotions “easy” by offering human relationships without the complexity of being together ‘face to face’. But if machines can become attentive and emotional, what is left to distinguish us as human beings? We are facing a paradigm shift in how we understand ourselves physiologically, as data and algorithms, and are being forced to question the role of our biological body.

As the relationship between artificial and human intelligence becomes increasingly intermingled in our everyday lives, ‘Synthetic Seduction’ provides immersive and timely insight into the limits of human empathy and intimacy. We are glad at SixtyEight Art Institute to host such a space for thought. We hope it will start conversations and maybe even encourage some intimacy among our visiting audiences in the coming weeks.